All 67,000 Rutgers University students will see their professors back in the classroom on Monday, April 17. The 9,000 Rutgers faculty members who were on strike for the past five days will return to work while the contract framework is codified and submitted to the union workers for a final vote.
After almost a year of unresolved contract negotiations, full-time professors, adjunct lecturers, and graduate workers began protesting on Monday, April 10, in support of three Rutgers unions – AAUP-AFT representing full and part time employees, Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union, and AAUP-BHSN, representing healthcare workers.
The walkout was the first in the public university’s 257 year history. While there have been other higher education strikes of late, including ones at the New School and in the University of California system, none have reached the size and scope of the Rutgers strike which brought classes to a halt for the entire week.
Among the issues the unions fought for were job security and healthcare benefits for part-time staff and living wages for adjunct faculty members and graduate workers.
Governor Phil Murphy intervened on day one of the strike by calling lead negotiators for the faculty unions and Rutgers administration representatives to continue working with mediation and support from his office in Trenton.
As the multiple parties negotiated in the state’s capitol, the energy on campus continued to grow. Each day of the strike brought more supporters and larger picket lines. During Wednesday’s rally in New Brunswick, drag queens, breakdancers, singing, and music performed by students within Rutgers’ Mason Gross School of the Arts energized the crowd.
By that afternoon, the lawn in front of New Brunswick’s Scott Hall was filled with demonstrators who carried signs that said “Rutgers is for education! We are not a corporation!” and “We R on strike for a living wage.”
The strike not only affected classes on Rutgers’ main campuses in New Brunswick, Newark, and Camden locations, but the Rutgers courses taught in the University Center building at MCCC as well.
According to Leonard Winogora, MCCC Professor and president and state delegate of Mercer’s adjunct faculty union, the strike had the full support of many other unions.
“Representatives have shown up at the strike marches at the three campuses of Rutgers,” Professor Winogora said. “From steel workers’ unions to teamsters trucking, we seem to have total support.”
Along with outside union support, undergraduates also protested in solidarity with the Rutgers unions.
Brenda Frazier, part-time lecturer for the Department of Anthropology was reassured by the support from the undergrads, including those in her own classes. She said that shutting things down and picketing would send a message to the university that faculty were serious about their demands.
Frazier said, “I want to see some respect from the university and I want to see President Holloway put his money where his mouth is when he says he cares about the students.”
Rutgers’ President, Jonathan Holloway, has come under fierce criticism, particularly by those who see his threats to sue the strikers as contrary to his stated views on the importance of uplifting laborers in his own writings as a scholar and American historian.
Soili Smith, an American Studies graduate student who attended the picket line at the State House on Friday said, “Jonathan Holloway threatened us pretty much immediately before a strike was even called.”
Smith continued, “He sent an email out to everyone saying that he would have no choice but to file an injunction, and yet we’ve seen that he does have a choice because he hasn’t filed it yet.”
President Holloway sent a message to the Rutgers community on March 21 in an attempt to prevent a strike. He wrote, “The courts have ruled that strikes by public employees are unlawful in New Jersey. I am hopeful that an unlawful strike or job action will not be called.”
As a response to Holloway’s statement, over 40 American scholars sent an open letter asking the President not to take punitive actions but instead “to act in good faith and recognize the demands of undergraduate and graduate workers, adjuncts, EOF counselors, postdocs, contingent and tenure track faculty, and their sister unions.”
By the end of the week, the open letter had over 1,000 signatures of support, including one from Rutgers Political Science professor, Dr. Nikol Alexander-Floyd. One of Alexander-Floyd hopes is that the University will freeze rent.
“Rutgers is the biggest landlord in New Brunswick. So when we raise rents, all other landlords raise rents as well, and it’s really pushing out working class and poor people who are disproportionately Black and brown,” Dr. Alexander-Floyd said.
Alexander-Floyd was just one among many who supported Bargaining for the Common Good (BCG) demands which include affordable housing and rent freeze, the Beloved Community Fund, a fund for local residents experiencing financial hardship, a debt forgiveness program, and better treatment of workers.
Members of New Labor, the New Brunswick based organization that advocates for better working conditions, also picketed for BCG.
Abela Rodriguez, parent of an engineering student at Rutgers and a member of New Labor, picketed in Trenton on Friday and joined the march to the State House.
“I’m a single mother and I’m struggling to support my son. I can’t afford to live in New Brunswick and Rutgers is very expensive,” Rodriguez said.
She said she hopes that the college administration can help her and other families struggling with expenses support their children’s education.
Since Monday, there have been nightly updates run by Amy Higer, a part-time lecturer in the Division of Global Affairs and President of the Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union. More than 3,000 people tuned in nightly, either by Zoom or live stream on YouTube.
After a tentative deal was agreed upon early Saturday morning, Higer led another live stream that afternoon to update the Rutgers community on its framework.
She explained the strike was suspended as most of the core issues the unions had were addressed. This suspension allows for a continuation of a strike if needed as negotiations continue on open items.
Michael Matise, Associate Professor of Neuroscience and Cell Biology, said, during Saturday’s live stream, that the Medical Union will “continue to fight for university-wide improvements in the bridge research funding program, which is really a critical mechanism to support lab workers’ salaries.”
Remaining open demands for graduate students include guaranteed funding and subsidies for childcare needs. The BCG demands for an affordable housing program are still open as well.
Despite these open demands, Higer was very happy with the outcome of the strike.
“This was a campaign, and this is historic…those in our community at Rutgers who have the most on the faculty, who get paid the highest, who have the most job security were in this fight, not for themselves, but for those who had the least,” Higer said on Saturday. “Because of that, we won some tremendous gains.”
Donna Murch, Rutgers Associate Professor of History, ended the meeting by commending everyone for fighting to break the struggles that labor unions face in this country.
Murch said, “The fight continues, but I just wanted to hold up what we have accomplished together. I just wanted to end the meeting with a sense of accomplishment because it is an accomplishment that allows us to fight for more, which is very important.”
Murphy stated in a press release early Saturday morning that the tentative agreement was a “fair and amicable conclusion.”
Note: Multimedia content was added to this post on April 24, 2023.
